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Made in Belgium: The Confetti's

At the end of elementary school we were all taken over by a new hype: New Beat. We were all dressed in fluorescent colored T-shirts, lycra shorts and stuck bright smiley pins everywhere we could. And we were all dancing to "the Sound of C".

Little did we know that this "New Beat" was in such a degree commercialized by the Confitti's that all top DJ's no longer wanted to be tied to this style. Belgian DJ's had developed this style in the mid-80ies by pitching records to a lower speed. But we kids were oblivious to what was happening in the clubs....the pins with smileys on the contrary were pretty popular. And we liked the funny looking tall Peter Renkens from the Confetti's. And we were so proud that a Belgian music style took over the world...at least for a year or so. Then Belgium and the rest of music moved on to house and other types of electronic dance music. And fortunately the horrid new beat fashion never came back either.

@Brian: New Beat was the leading music style for several years in clubs in Belgium & UK in the mid 80ies. The Confetti's made it mainstream in 89. They were succesful for 2 years and then it was over and out with New Beat.However the clubs had then moved on to "Acid" and other techno styles (cfr Praga Khan http://goofballsworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/made-in-belgium-praga-khan_13.html) .And Technotronic "Pump up the jam" and 2 Unlimited conquered the world with more commercial dance music (http://goofballsworld.blogspot.com/2009/11/made-in-belgium-pump-up-jam-by.html) (http://goofballsworld.blogspot.com/2010/04/made-in-belgium-2-unlimited.html)